NHL Scores in Its Goal to Cut Fights : Hockey: The drop in brawls is due to closer supervision by officials.

The NHL is taking a lot of the fight out of this year’s playoffs.

In contrast to the last few years, when some teams tried to brawl their way to the Stanley Cup, this year’s postseason has been remarkably tame.

That’s not to say they haven’t been physical. Aside from a game-ending brawl in the opener of the New York Islanders-New York Rangers series, there has been little fighting.

Some fist-throwing, stick-swinging and shoving, but not much fighting.

NHL Executive Vice President Brian O’Neill, the man in charge of discipline, said the drop in fighting is due to closer supervision by officials and an effort to cut down on pileups in front of the net that often lead to brawls.

“We’ve instructed our officials to move in a little quicker to break up the scrums in front of the net,” he said. “Each playoff series has a supervisor who meets with the officials the day of the game, just as kind of a refresher.

“We’re trying to have the officials get in quickly to break up the scrums. We know we can prevent a lot of fights by getting in to stop them.”

The contrast has been startling. Two years ago, there were 105 major penalties for fighting in the first round alone. Last year, that number dropped to 61 and this year, it was 24--six of which took place in the Islanders-Rangers fight after Game 1. The NHL suspended Islanders winger Mick Vukota for 10 games and defenseman Ken Baumgartner for one game for their roles in starting the brawl. There were no other fights in that series.

Two other first-round series--Buffalo-Montreal and Los Angeles-Calgary--were also played without a fight.

Through three games in each of the four second-round series, there were 15 fighting majors, one less than last year. Eight of the 15 came in Monday night’s Capitals-Rangers game. There has been none in the Boston-Montreal series and only two each in the St. Louis-Chicago and Los Angeles-Edmonton series.

Another reason for the drop in fights is that officials have been more liberal in handing out misconduct penalties. Misconducts in the first round were up from 56 to 86--nearly mirroring the drop in fights--and are up from eight to 11 in the second round.

In Game 5 of the Toronto-St. Louis series, referee Andy van Hellemond handed out 10 misconducts after one second-period incident, banishing every skater on the ice.

The lack of fighting doesn’t mean that there’s any less hitting.

“The games are very physical,” O’Neill said. “But with so much at stake, the players have to learn not to retaliate when they’re hit. The game are so close, no one wants to be the one to wear the goat horns.”